


Not the End and Not the Start

by Muir_Wolf



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-08
Updated: 2012-02-08
Packaged: 2017-10-30 19:29:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/335259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muir_Wolf/pseuds/Muir_Wolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“Sooner or later,” she says, “we all surprise ourselves.”</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not the End and Not the Start

**Author's Note:**

> **Prompt:**   
>  _Other people’s memories cling to me  
>  like dogs, drawn by the smell,  
> and I have to drive them away  
> with scolding and a stick._

 

“Do you think,” she says, her chin on her hand, leaning into the bar, “we'll ever go back to who we were?”

She's not usually one for the philosophic questions, and it's that more than anything that makes the rest of them pause. Hawkeye's glass is halfway to his mouth, a frown creasing his forehead. B.J.'s cupping his drink in both hands and leaning over it, as if he can soak up some sort of strength from it by proximity alone. Charles' fingers have tightened incrementally on his glass, but he's the quietest of all of them—his breath, in fact, seems stifled in his lungs.

Potter shakes his head. “The thing about war,” he says, his voice a little strained, “is that it never quite does go away. Stays with a person, whether they want it to or not.”

Hawkeye's still for another beat, and then he throws back the rest of his scotch. The burn of it relaxes something in him that he's barely realized has tightened.

“Well then,” he says, trying for light, “I hope Sidney doesn't mind doing house calls.”

If he's a little louder the rest of the evening, no one mentions it. He's always done his best at distracting the lot of them, and it's more welcome tonight than most nights. Even Charles eventually loosens his grasp on the glass and manages some easy banter.

Potter watches them, and lets them.

Margaret's quiet as she excuses herself, but she goes.

 

 

Hawkeye leans back, stretching tight muscles. He groans a little as tension gives.

Margaret’s sitting in post-op, her pen lax in her fingers, her eyes focused somewhere beyond the wall across from her, and he wanders over.

“Lot going on up there?” he asks, gesturing to her head as he slumps down in the chair across from her.

“Hmm?” she says. “Oh, oh no, I'm fine.” She starts tidying up the paperwork, and he sighs.

“Margaret,” he says, “we both know I'm just going to keep bugging you until you tell me what's on your mind, so why not just get it over with?” He grins at her, all teeth and faux innocence, and she rolls her eyes and tries to hide her smile.

“I just thought I'd have more done by now,” she says, pushing the words out, clearly expecting him to find them foolish. He leans his chin on his hand.

“More what done? You're a major, that's nothing to scoff at,” he says.

“Yes,” she says, “a _divorced_ major. I thought I'd—I don't know.”

“Be starting a family?” 

“No,” she says, “not yet, I don't want to have to resign my commission or be moved stateside. But the possibility of it?” She smiles, but it's stretched thin and she shrugs, letting it fall away.

“We’re not going to be here forever,” he says. “We have time to figure things out.”

“To change,” she says, something like a question in her voice. Something like a challenge. He’s quiet for a moment, and then he shakes his head.

“No,” he says. “No, I think we’ve both done about as much changing as we’re capable of. I don’t think humans are as elastic as greeting card companies would have us believe. I think this place has pulled us as far as we’re ever going to go.”

“And you don’t want more than this?” she asks, and he can see that fire in her that he's always admired.

“Margaret,” he says, and then breaks off, uncertain. “I want to go home,” he says at last. “I want this lousy war to end and I want Beej to be able to see Erin before she turns into a teenager and I want to see my dad again. I want so much that I can't bear thinking about it, let alone want more. Yes, I want a family and I want kids someday, but right now isn't it enough just to be making it through one long day after another?”

She rubs her palms along her thighs, meeting his eyes.

“I don't know,” she says. “I don't know if it is, anymore.”

 

 

 _After the war,_ they say, as if there can ever be an after. As if time starts and stops in clean sweeps, the curtain falling and the stage resetting for the third act.

Hawkeye busies himself at the still as B.J. talks about _after_ —how he'll take Erin out for trips to the park, how Peg will meet him at the airport, how they'll go out for dinner and go out for dancing and grow old together. Their lives will twine back together, and they will never speak of the days they were apart—how time will spread like distance, and as the hours pass these months here will grow further away.

Hawkeye dreams of the coasts of Maine.

His dad will meet him as he drives into Crabapple Cove, and he'll have finally found his way back home, he thinks, but he knows better how time stretches. He told Charles, once, about those short weeks that serenaded his mother's slow decay, and still, these decades later, he remembers the taste of syrup on his tongue when he realized she was gone.

Memories are lived in black and white, with dashes of vivid color, and sometimes he thinks the reds and greens of the 4077 will never fade back into gray. Sometimes he thinks of Sophie's brown coat and Margaret's blonde hair and the pink of B.J.'s smile and he wonders if he could bear them to fade.

 

 

B.J. hugs Hawkeye too tight again, ruffling his hair as he pulls away. “I'm going to go write a letter to Peg,” he says. “If you _ever_ do anything as stupid as that again, I'll kill you myself.” Hawkeye makes a shooing motion.

“He couldn't be moved,” he says, “you know that. Come on, I'm the resident coward here, you know I wouldn't have gotten into any real trouble. I know to start surrendering as soon as any North Koreans show up, and I had my white flag all ready, it would've been fine.”

B.J. waves an admonishing finger and then pats Hawkeye's cheek a little too hard, reassuring himself that he's there.

“Peg'll kill you if you leave me all alone out here,” he says.

“Tell Peg to tell you to stop being such a worrywart, it's not a good look for you,” Hawkeye laughs, shoving him off.

Hawkeye watches B.J. leave and then looks around—the Officer's Club is empty except him and Margaret and Igor. Margaret's watching him, so he slides down the requisite seat or two until he's next to her.

“Mind a little company?” he asks, and she shakes her head. They sit in companionable silence for a bit, nursing their drinks.

“That was brave of you,” she says. “Refusing to leave Marks. Stupid, but brave.”

He grins a little, but his eyes are on the drink in his hand and he stays quiet for too long.

“You know,” he says at last, his voice low, “you always call us civilians.”

“Well, you are,” she frowns. He nods once, twice, then stills.

“I don't know that doctors _can_ be civilians,” he says. His voice is strained, and he still can't quite look up and meet her eyes.

He's washed, now, but she remembers the blood on his clothes and on his forearms; she remembers the way his voice had gone urgent and how his orders had turned sharp. She's seen them all red with blood and turned fierce, and there's not one of them that hasn't torn themselves inside out for a patient, not even Charles.

It's a surgeon's hand she touches when she covers his with her own. When he starts, and looks up, it's a soldier's eyes that meet hers.

He tries to smile but falters, biting his lip to still his features.

“Sooner or later,” she says, “we all surprise ourselves.”

 

 

Margaret has a notebook buried beneath her clothes in her locker. The name of every person that's been treated in the 4077th is in there in her small, cramped writing—an unofficial report she keeps for herself. Benjamin Pierce's name is in there, as is Walter O'Reilly's. Too many people too young and too dear and too brave and too afraid, and she's seen them all lying on the cots in post-op.

 _Maybe,_ she thinks, _maybe there's no such thing as a civilian anymore._

She brushes her hair out, counting the strokes as she goes. There is so little room for error in their lives; there is so little time to be all she wants to be.

 

 

 

 

He sees her at the luggage carousel, and he's not smiling when he salutes her, there in front of God and everyone. She laughs, at first, even as instinct has her saluting back, but even his eyes are serious as he drops his arm and pulls her into a hug. His body is familiar against hers, and when they pull back they both fall into laughter; he catches her hand and squeezes once.

He carries her luggage out to the truck, and Maine, she finds, is colder than she was expecting. She's reminded of freezing nights in canvas tents, and she tugs on the gloves he pulls out of the glove box.

That night, before a roaring fire, they eat dinner and linger over memories. Her luggage is in her room and he knows their beds are separated by more than space alone. He pours them each a few fingers of scotch.

“To after,” he says.

“May it hurry up and find us,” she agrees.

  
_Finis_   


 


End file.
